The challenge: Read 25 books in 5 different categories in the year 2011.

It was the end of October when I sent my son, Samuel, a link to a blog article that had come across my twitter feed. A couple of gals had been super motivated on New Year’s Day and challenged themselves to read 10 books in 10 categories by 10/10/10 for a total of 100 books! One of the gals blogged about her experience of reading 100 books in ten months and it caught my eye. Their goal was to force themselves out of their reading rut. They wanted to stretch and read in areas they don’t normally read. Samuel and I ended up exchanging a couple of emails back and forth. We both loved the idea of reading in areas we may not normally read and we both loved the idea of a goal. While Samuel has plenty of time to read and reads at a rate I can’t begin to match, I have precious little time for reading but I like challenges! Before long I got the following text:
“you. me. 25 books in 2011. We’ll call it 25:11, and make up a set of categories And each book, we write a blog post about. You in?”

I was captivated! It took me awhile to commit and I don’t know if I can read 25 books next year. What I do know is that it will be good to read in a variety of genres and it will be good to have a high goal to reach for. We exchanged some more ideas and finally settled on this plan:
5 books in each of 5 categories:
Old Books (written before 1900)
Fiction
Faith & Religion
Non-Fiction
Your Choice
I hope a number of people will get excited about this idea and join us! It would be fun to have the energy of others to motivate me to keep striving towards this goal. Please consider giving it a shot. Here are a few thoughts about the challenge:
If you frequently read books written before 1900 already, why not challenge yourself to an even older time period? Also, in your non-fiction, consider having two or three of those selections be recent publications, something written in the last decade. Don’t forget biographies! Those are a great choice and could easily fit under several of the above categories!
We agreed that audio books are okay. I wouldn’t want all my reading to be listening, but realistically I’m not going to get this done if I don’t listen to some of them.
Want to join us? You should and you know it! Blogging is optional. In fact, it would be more fun if people shared what they were reading in the 25 Books Forum! I think it would be interesting to hear what people read. We might find new books to add to our lists. I’m already mentally thinking about what I’ll read and I have created a list of candidates for each of the categories. It is by no means definitive, it’s just a few that caught my eye as I perused my book shelves and “books to read” lists. Honestly, I’m excited about reading some books I’ve been putting off for years!
Come join the fun: 25books.org